How I help my coaching clients

When you start working with me, you begin a journey of transformation that will affect all areas of your life – creative, personal and professional.

These are the main areas where I help my clients – all of them work on the first one, plus one or more of the others.

1. Personal transformation

You are the biggest asset to your creative career – and the biggest potential liability. Which means our work begins and ends with self-knowledge. All your creativity, results and rewards flow from this.

Coaching is a mirror that shows you yourself as you really are – your strengths and weaknesses, hopes and fears, blind spots and hidden talents. Once you know these, you are in a better position to switch on your superpowers, avoid your Achilles heel, and transform your life.

This is the hardest part of the coaching journey for me to describe here – it has to be experienced. It’s about transforming your mindset, connecting with your deepest feelings, facing down your fears, and developing new facets of your personality.

There aren’t so many techniques or specific goals as in the other areas we work on. Yet clients invariably tell me it this is the most powerful, memorable and valuable part of the coaching experience.

2. Extraordinary creativity

I can help you with all aspects of your creative work – from establishing effective working habits, fending off the demands and distractions of 21st century life, to connecting with your deepest sources of inspiration, and dealing with stubborn creative blocks.

I can also help you turn your Inner Critic from your worst enemy to a valuable ally – because a finely-honed critical faculty is essential to producing world-class work.

If you’re a writer, I can give you detailed feedback on your work-in-progress, and help you develop and polish your writing. Writing a book can be a long and lonely process, and my author clients tell me it makes a world of difference having me along as a co-pilot.

Whatever your creative discipline, I will encourage you to apply your creativity to every aspect of your life and work. You can achieve extraordinary things when you start treating your life, career and/or business as canvases for your creativity.

3. Powerful communication

There’s no point being brilliant unless the world knows it. So you need to communicate persuasively, to get the right people to work with you, buy from you, or help you in your mission.

Most of us are more comfortable with some forms of communication than others. But to achieve exceptional success, you need to communicate powerfully in many different arenas – in person, on the phone, via the written word; one-to-one, and to audiences large and small.

I will help you prepare, rehearse, revise and deliver all your important professional communications:

In-person communication and performance

Preparing for important meetings
Approaching difficult conversations with confidence and creativity
Psyching yourself up for electrifying creative performances
Designing and delivering powerful presentations
Networking without looking pushy or desperate
Getting the best out of employees and contractors
Having crucial conversations with your business partner(s)

Written communication

Wording emails that communicate clearly – and get the response you want
Crafting a proposal that inspires, instils confidence, and prompts action
Writing articles that position you as an expert and open the door to opportunities
Writing that book you’ve always said you have in you

As well as communication skills and techniques, we will deal with the root cause of most muddled and ineffective communication: fear.

When you start speaking and writing from a place of enthusiasm and creativity instead of fear, you will become a much more powerful and persuasive communicator – and more doors will open for you.

4. Building your brand

If building an online presence to create career opportunities or new business is important to you, I can help, based on over a decade’s experience of doing this for my own and my clients’ businesses:

Creating a brand that sets you apart
Choosing the medium (text, audio, video or images) that will work best for you
Deciding where to focus your efforts (blogging? podcasting? Twitter? Facebook? etc.)
Devising a media strategy to create content that delivers results
Using copywriting principles to attract people’s attention, and inspire them to take action
Finding the time to create, publish and network online while getting your other work done

5. Financial freedom

Money is one of your most important tools in creating an extraordinary career and an extraordinary life.

When you know how to create money, you remove a huge source of anxiety from your life. In itself, this is a massive boost to your creativity, not to mention your wellbeing. And used wisely, money can support your creative endeavours as well as providing the lifestyle you want for yourself (and your family, if you have one).

So it’s not surprising that money is often a big theme of my coaching work:

Dealing with your fears and limiting beliefs around money
Setting clear and ambitious financial goals
Selling high-end artworks and/or creative services
Raising your prices with confidence
Delighting your clients and customers by delivering outsize value
Using your online presence to attract new customers and/or business leads
Living a life of abundance (instead of scarcity) and generosity (instead of fear)

One of my specialisms is helping clients sell highly-skilled, sometimes-intangible and very valuable creative services – design, consulting, copywriting, editing, music composition, etc. The kind of service that is often hard to explain, but amazing for clients to experience. Here, I help clients to differentiate themselves from cheaper competitors, and grow their business by competing on value, not price.

—

If this sounds like the kind of help you are looking for, this page explains how to apply for a coaching place.